An Analysis on Traffic Accidents on Undivided Expressway in Cold and Snow Area

Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol. 8, 2010 An Analysis on Traffic Accidents on Undivided Expressway in Cold and Snow Area Kazushi SANO Touru INAGAKI Associate Professor Graduate Student Civil and Environmental Engineering Civil and Environmental Engineering Nagaoka University of Technology Nagaoka University of Technology Kamitomioka1603-1, Nagaoka Niigata Kamitomioka1603-1, Nagaoka Niigata 940-2188, Japan 940-2188, Japan Fax: +81-258-47-9650 Fax: +81-258-47-9650 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] Jouji NAKANO Nguyen Cao Y Senior Deputy Director Graduate Student Planning Division, Road Bureau Civil and Environmental Engineering Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Nagaoka University of Technology Tourism Kamitomioka1603-1, Nagaoka, Niigata, 2-1-3,Kasumigaseki,Chiyodaku,Tokyo 940-2188, Japan 100-8918 Japan Fax: +81-258-47-9650 Fax :+81-3-5253-1618 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail : nakano-j22g @mlit.go.jp Abstract: Some fatal accidents occur on two lanes expressway in cold and snow area in Japan and no rigid median strip causes more damage to passenger in cars. It is very important to find effective countermeasures that reduce the number of these tragic traffic accidents. However, general characteristics and factors of traffic accidents on undivided expressway have not been clarified sufficiently yet. We apply a discriminant analysis to traffic accidents data for five years in order to find some crucial factors for traffic accidents especially in snow cold region. Two categories, fatal or serious and slight injury, are used as a dependent variable. On the other hand, weather, road circumstance, and cruising speed are used as independent variables. We also propose some useful countermeasures to reduce the miserable traffic accidents on undivided expressway. Key Words: Traffic accident, Head-on collision, and Rural two lane expressway 1. INTRODUCTION It is March 9th, 2007, when a passenger car overran center line and had a head-on collision with a big lorry. All three passengers including two children were killed at the traffic accident. The accident site had only two lanes (two ways) and no rigid median strip, which caused fatal accidents. As ordinal expressway in Japan has four lanes or more and rigid divided median strip, no car can invade into the opposite lane and crashes. Some expressways in local area with low traffic have only two lanes without rigid divided median strips because of the cost reduction. It is very important to find effective countermeasures that reduce the number of these tragic accidents. However, general characteristics and factors of accidents on undivided expressway have not been clarified sufficiently yet. Then, in this research, we try to find some crucial factors for traffic accidents especially in snow cold region and propose some useful 2048 Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol. 8, 2010 countermeasures to reduce the miserable traffic accidents on undivided expressway. The total length of undivided expressway is 1647.0 km among the total length of expressway in Japan is 7,377.9 km and the proportion is 22.3% in 2005. Figure 1 shows a section of typical undivided expressway, where simple plastic poles are used as median strips. Vehicles cannot overtake by using the opposite lane but some cars overran the center line by slipping or failure of driving. Figure 1 Undivided Expressway Figure 2 shows the number of traffic accidents occurred on both divided and undivided expressway in Niigata Prefecture for 5 years. The number of traffic accidents occurred at undivided sections is less than that at divided sections. However, the percentage of fatal traffic accident at undivided expressway occupies 16.9% and the proportion is much higher than 3.8% at divided expressway. Recognition of factors for traffic accidents at undivided expressway is very useful in order to reduce the number of fatal or serious traffic accidents Figure 2 Number of traffic accidents on expressway in Niigata Prefecture There are some previous researches with related to head on collision at undivided two lanes 2049 Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol. 8, 2010 roads. Some researches focus on human factors and others focus on road geometry and weather factors. Garder P. (2006) showed that majority of head-on crashes on two-lane at rural roads were caused by drivers making errors or misjudging situations. Hagiwara et al. (2005) mentioned that lack of attention of drives mainly caused accidents while slippery and rutted road surface were also important factors. Chen Zhang et al. (2005) showed that speed limit, SACRH (sum of absolute change rate of horizontal curvature), MAXD (maximum degree of horizontal curve), and SACRV (sum of absolute change rate of vertical curvature) significantly influenced the incidence of head-on crashes. Terrance M. RENGARASU et al. (2007) also identified the casual factors of head-on collisions in cold area and proposed effective countermeasures for them. The purpose of this research is to examine the factors for traffic accidents at undivided expressway in cold and snow area. The target is similar to the research of Hagiwara et al. (2007). However, their research doesn’t focus on traffic accidents on expressway but national road in Hokkaido. In fact, Vehicle behaviors on expressway are much different from that on national road because of the difference of their cruising speed. Speed limits on expressway are mainly 100km/h or 80km/h: the former is applied to one at flat area with good geometry design and the later is applied to one at mountain area. Most of speed limits on national roads are 50km/h and 60km/h is used for only high standard national roads. As one of the most important factors of traffic accidents is cruising speed, we believe that analyzing traffic data on express is very important to reduce the number of fatal traffic accidents. 2. TRAFFIC ACCIDENT Table 1 shows statistic about traffic accidents that occurred on expressway in Japan from 2004 to 2008. The proportion of fatal accident on undivided expressway is 7.2% and it is much higher than that on divided expressway. The proportion of killed people among casualties on undivided expressway is also higher. Once a traffic accident occurs on undivided expressway, it is apt to cause serious damage. It is very important to know factors of traffic accidents on undivided expressway in order to reduce serious traffic accidents and victims Table 1 Statistic about traffic accidents in Japan 2050 Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol. 8, 2010 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 Total Number of Traffic Accident [1] 235 313 287 244 222 1,301 Number of Fatal Traffic Accident [2] 14 23 23 19 15 94 Proportion of Fatal Accident [2]/[1] 6.0% 7.3% 8.0% 7.8% 6.8% 7.2% Number of casualties[3] 485 669 614 592 552 2,912 Undivided Number of killed people [4] 19 27 29 29 29 133 Proportion of killed people [4]/[3] 3.9% 4.0% 4.7% 4.9% 5.3% 4.6% Number of Traffic Accident [1] 14,090 14,413 13,796 13,748 13,575 69,622 Number of Fatal Traffic Accident [2] 313 313 267 287 257 1,437 Proportion of Fatal Accident [2]/[1] 2.2% 2.2% 1.9% 2.1% 1.9% 2.1% Number of casualties[3] 23,063 23,608 22,598 22,420 21,896 113,585 Divided Number of killed people [4] 348 362 309 322 300 1,641 Proportion of killed people [4]/[3] 1.5% 1.5% 1.4% 1.4% 1.4% 1.4% 2.1 Traffic Accident Data Among traffic accidents occurred on undivided expressway, head-on collisions caused by cars passing center line directly cause serious damage. Table 2 shows the number of head-on collisions occurred on Japanese expressway from 2000 to 2004 by each expressway. Ban-etsu Expressway and Joushin-etsu Expressway dominant over others with related to the number of fatal accidents. Table 2 Head-on collision by expressway in Japan Total Fatal Fatal/Total Ban-etsu Expressway 30 8 26.7% Joushin-etsu Expressway 24 9 37.5% Shikoku-jyukan Expressway 18 1 5.6% Toukai-Hokuriku Expressway 15 3 20.0% Shikoku-oudan Expressway 14 1 7.1% Akita Expressway 11 2 18.2% Yamagata Expressway 11 2 18.2% Yonago Expressway 9 2 22.2% Others 4 2 50.0% Total 136 30 22.1% Table 3 shows the length of each expressway in Niigata prefecture. As Niigata prefecture has five expressways including Ban-etsu and Joushin-etsu Expressway, we focus on traffic accidents occurred in Niigata prefecture. As Niigata prefecture is located to north of Japan, it has much snow in winter. The number of traffic accidents occurred on expressways in Niigata from 2002 to 2006 is 1,130 in total. 985 accidents occurred on divided expressway, the number of accidents that occurred on undivided express way is 77, and the number of accidents that occurred at other locations such as ramps or interchanges is 68. In this research, we ignore the last accidents and only focus on accidents on divided or undivided expressway. In addition, we 2051 Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol. 8, 2010 use the disaggregate database that has date, day of the week, time, the number of deceased and injured, weather, location information with geometric structures, the number of lanes, cruising speed, type of violation of traffic regulation, and personal attributes such as age, sex, and drive experience. Table 3 Expressway in Niigata prefecture Expressway Length(km) Hokuriku Expressway 193.8 Kan-etsu Expressway 93.6 Ban-etsu Expressway 46.5 Joushin-etsu Expressway 36.9 Nihonkai-tohoku Expressway 34.0 Total 404.8 2.2 Accidents Analysis In this section, we use 1,130 traffic accidents data occurred in Niigata prefecture from 2002 to 2006 Figure 3 shows the proportion of traffic accidents by road surface conditions such as Dry, Wet, Snow and Frozen.

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